SR4 was like 12 year old me was brought forward in time and asked to help design a videogame that 25 year old me would end up playing. It likely sank the franchise but I loved every goddamn ridiculous minute of it. I'm not saying it's a great game objectively but it is probably the most fun I've ever had playing a videogame since playing Co-op on Mercenaries 2, which also has a main female character option. Unfortunately Mei has about as much personality as a plank of wood, but so do the other two protags.

I'd really like there to be at least one female protagonist as a main character in the GTA franchise. GTA can do a good plot, even if 90% of the signs in the GTA universe are sexual puns which also seem to have been written by 12 year old me. Why I don't seem to remember being so involved in the modern gaming industry is truly a mystery.

You're talking about the webcomic Sexy Losers. If you have ever used the words "fap" or "shlick" to describe masturbation it is because that webcomic INVENTED those terminologies. Although as far as sexual humour webcomics go, there's no beating Oglaf. Most people don't even realize that Oglaf is actually written by a woman.

Took me by surprise too. I was into weird sexual shit for years before I was even convinced that more than 1% of the typical /d/-level fetish crowd are actually women. I sort of just assumed everyone was male for the longest time. If it weren't for the Fenoxo forums I'd probably still be operating under that delusion.

Meh. Would have preferred they would have come up with new characters (New characters? In the comic industry? GOD FORBID!) rather than simply gender and race swapping old ones. If they actually cared, they should care enough to make a new character, promote them, and give them their own series, or at least get them into a mainstream group. But hey, the current timelines weren't fucked enough as it was with characters randomly dying and coming back to life and/or being replaced by body doubles and/or being replaced by their sidekicks.

Also, the big casualty in all of this is obviously Iron Man's suit. Ditching the classic red and yellow for bright-ass smooth chrome? That's terrible and Marvel should feel bad, they've turned him into a cross between Robocop and my kitchen toaster._________________The Thirties dreamed white marble and slipstream chrome, immortal crystal and burnished bronze, but the rockets on the covers of the Gernsback pulps had fallen on London in the dead of night, screaming. - William Gibson, The Gernsback Continuum

Notice how all the buzz is about "Captain America is black!" and "Thor is a woman!" I think this underlines a problem with these shake-up attempts, which are nothing new to either of the titles. There is nothing groundbreaking here. If there was, the headlines would be about people who aren't Captain America or Thor.

Having Sam Wilson take over as Captain America does make a certain amount of sense, given their history together. In fact, it's happened before.
I think an unintended consequence might be that they've basically robbed Falcon of his independent identity as a black superhero and relegated him to a stand-in for a more popular character, a character built originally around a white guy. Certainly some people are going to see it that way. We've had a black Captain America before, but it wasn't a guy who created and maintained his own superheroic identity. It was a new character invented for the role. Captain America: The Winter Soldier did a lot to pump up Wilson's character of The Falcon in the mind of the public. Now you're basically dumping his unique persona and just transplanting him into the one used by Steve Rogers?
Why not strike while the iron is hot and pour more devotion and development into The Falcon? Hell, you could spin this as a chance to do "what we've always wanted to do, give Falcon more time as a major title" but couldn't justify based on the sales numbers, or some other bullshit like that. It would instantly change the narrative AND give the impression of crawling out from underneath bad policies, changing your ways, etc. It would at least appear more genuine and original by keeping the originality of the character.

"Thor" being treated more like a title than an actual name for an individual has been done before as well. The character was originally an alter-ego of whoever wielded Mjolnir, in fact his first "host" was a feeble man named Donald Blake (though this was retconned later). There have even been ladies as Thor in What If...? titles before, including a Jane Foster never met a separate "Thor" (though unlike the upcoming version, she was named "Thordis" instead).
But the new direction still has potential downsides, even if it does introduce a totally new female character. Why not promote one of the already-established female superheroes as filling the void left by Thor without actually being made into a literal XX-Thor character? They even have several Norse-themed superwomen to fit the bill if they want the Asgardian element (Brunhilde, anyone? Sif maybe?). One could make the case that they're passing over female characters who have already put in the time and maybe could use the full merchandising spotlight a little more than they've been getting. Why not promote the superheroines they already have instead of promoting Thor even more than it has been?

At first glance you might think that these criticisms are contradictory; one complaining that an established minority character gets a bigger role and the other complaining that (what we assume will be) a new female character is being invented instead of reusing an established character. But what connects them is the fact that they're both existing roles being filled by someone else directly, instead of letting that role be supplanted by another character's role.

It seems pretty clear that what matters is the brand identity of the names Captain America and Thor, with this supposed shake-up being perceived as just another cynical sales gimmick (one that each character has undergone before) that'll be reversed as soon as sales start to slump, not decisions being made based on compelling characters or storytelling. It can be argued that these are just cash-grabs using the veneer of empowering women and minorities by giving them bigger roles, when it's actually giving them someone else's bigger role at the expense of their own. Once again, The Falcon is not getting the focus, Captain America is. The many potential non-Thor female superheroes are not being given Thor's force of promotion and development, Thor is.

This Has All Happened Before. I think some people are getting tired of the same old, gimmicky, publicity-chasing approach to diversifying the Marvel Universe that still winds up focusing the spotlight on titles that do not staying "diversified" for very long. They already have a lot of diversity, it's just that this existing diversity is rarely utilized effectively. Instead what we see are these temporary publicity stunts whose controversy is only intended to drive sales for a few issues before things revert back to the status quo that was really never shaken very hard to begin with.

Thought this was interesting. It's almost like the "cool girl" is a semi-new unattainable archetype, presented as being progressive and modern and freeing but really just as terrible as any kind of docile housewife expectation. I didn't know it had a name, but I've seen a lot of questions (on Quora) by men who seem to think they're entitled to all this and more.

Thought this was interesting. It's almost like the "cool girl" is a semi-new unattainable archetype, presented as being progressive and modern and freeing but really just as terrible as any kind of docile housewife expectation. I didn't know it had a name, but I've seen a lot of questions (on Quora) by men who seem to think they're entitled to all this and more.

Part of her problem was being part of the reddit community and actually getting the idea in her head that she had to be a different person in meatspace to impress people in cyberspace. That's why I socialize on 4chan in the sweet embrace of anonymity. When everyone thinks of that site they usually think of /b/ or /pol/ but I only ever go on /co/ (comics & cartoons), /tg/ (traditional games), /d/ (hentai-alternative), /lit/ (literature), and /ck/ (cooking). There's an /lgbt/ board too but I never checked it out much. I guess I'm too used to /fit/ (fitness) and /fa/ (fashion) being the two gayest boards on 4chan. Seriously, the ho-yay there is palpable.